Still Life with French Novels and a Rose — Vincent van Gogh, 1887

In his Paris years Van Gogh read deeply in French naturalist fiction — Zola, the Goncourts, the whole romans-parisiens tradition. This 1887 still life puts the yellow-bound volumes on a table with a cut rose: not a neutral arrangement but a small argument about what a painter might read and why. One of the more bookish things he made, and the more surprising for it. A postcard for a reading desk, a literary correspondence, or a Van Gogh Paris-period collection. From the Vincent van Gogh collection.